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Leonardo DiCaprio is the upstart gang leader
Amsterdam Vallon in director Martin Scorsese's
period epic Gangs of New York.
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It's man against mythical creatures in two year-end film epics competing for audiences' attention, and I'm happy to report that man wins hands down.
Director Martin Scorsese's sprawling period drama, Gangs of New York, is a story of men, thieves and gang leaders battling to make their bloody imprint on 1863 New York City. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is director Peter Jackson's second installment of his Rings trilogy. An elaborate adaptation from J.R.R. Tolkien's popular trilogy, The Two Towers is a grandiose tale of hideous monsters, noble heroes, powerful wizards and tree spirits with minds and mouths of their own.
Both films have their share of disappointments, although I find myself mostly thinking about Gangs of New York, and I'm eager to watch it a second time. I can't say the same about The Two Towers, which is more solemn than any movie fantasy has the right to be. Jackson's sophomore installment packs half the spark of its exciting predecessor, The Fellowship of the Ring, despite a climactic showdown between warring armies at a mountainside fortress, Helms Deep. Jackson uses every special effect imaginable to wow audiences, and the battle spectacle he creates is breathtaking. Still, the intimate brutality of Scorsese's Gangs does a better job at keeping me on the edge of my seat.
Based on the 1928 book Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld by Herbert Asbury, Scorsese's sprawling and violent American epic focuses on the Lower Manhattan neighborhood of Five Points. Its story (written by longtime Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks with Steve Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan) follows the battle between an upstart gang leader, Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Five Points' longstanding kingpin, William Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis), who's known to everyone as Bill the Butcher. Five Points is a place of muddy streets and club-wielding bands with names like Plug Uglies, Bowery B'Hoys and Dead Rabbits. Vallon is on the side of New York's newly arrived immigrants, while the Butcher wants to keep these mostly Irish "invaders" out. It's not long before Vallon and Cutting confront each other in a brutal fight for the control of Five Points and to set New York City's stance regarding immigration.
There's a simple story under Gangs' epic setting, complete with a trio of stock characters: the hero, the villain and the pretty ingénue. Its drama is intentionally melodramatic. A son sets out to avenge his father's death at the hands of the man who murdered him years before. The son is Vallon, and the villain is Cutting. The love interest is Jennie Everdeane (Cameron Diaz), a pretty street thief who's loyal to Cutting but in love with Vallon.
DiCaprio is getting all the attention as the scrapper Vallon, his first significant performance since 2000's The Beach, but Gangs ultimately belongs to 45-year-old Day-Lewis. Beneath his colorful costume of a thick handlebar mustache and a worn top hat, Day-Lewis brings the Butcher to life. His performance is a high-wire act of creepy charisma and hot-tempered violence. He's lifelike, packing more than enough gusto into Cutting's wiry body to match Gangs' expansive sets, period costumes and detailed street life.
Day-Lewis' quieter moments create some of the best suspense in the film. At work in his butcher shop, Cutting explains to Vallon the art of slicing meat, matter-of-factly describing each section of flesh on a pig. For Cutting, meat represents food as well as his philosophy for survival, and you never know what he plans to do next with the cleaver in his hand.
DiCaprio's straightforward performance takes all the zest out of Vallon. There are no surprises or distinguishing characteristics to set him apart from a stockpile of movie heroes. DiCaprio says his lines with the cool detachment of an actor reading a script, so Vallon never appears to be real.
On-screen, DiCaprio pales next to Day-Lewis. As Vallon, he's a soiled and disheveled version of his matinee idol self. Granted, it's unfair to compare DiCaprio to Day-Lewis, because the latter has become one of modern film's great chameleons. Still, if DiCaprio had put more emotion behind his chin stubble, Gangs of New York might have become a true masterpiece. As it stands, it's a flawed film, but one that's definitely worth seeing.
Like many of Scorsese's films, Gangs is primarily a man's tale. It's no surprise that Diaz makes little impact as the woman torn between the warring men. Her best scene is a thankless one: She is the nervous target of Cutting's knife-throwing demonstration at a boisterous party. Up to this time in her career, Diaz's stellar performances are in comedies. That's where she makes the best use of her pretty smile and playful personality. Scorsese needs Diaz to keep matters tense and dramatic, and she is not up to the task. He needs passion from Diaz to help bring a dangerous edge to the love triangle between Vallon, Cutting and Everdeane. From start to finish, all she can offer is her winsome smile.
Jim Broadbent provides the appropriate bluster as political boss William Tweed. Still, he fails to distinguish himself from his opulent surroundings, despite the fact that he delivers the film's cleverest line: "The appearance of the law must be upheld," Tweed tells the Butcher, early in the film. "Especially while it's being broken."
John Reilly, who's great playing likable outcasts in the Paul Thomas Anderson dramas Magnolia and Boogie Nights, is never convincing as a corrupt police officer in cahoots with Cutting. The best support comes from Brendan Gleeson, best known for his role as an Irish thief in The General, playing a feisty acquaintance of Vallon's father who supports the would-be gang leader in his fight against Cutting.
The best segment in Gangs of New York occurs at the beginning of the film. It's a brutal street fight between Cutting and his Nativist followers against Vallon's father (Liam Neeson), a leader of the city's Irish immigrants who's known as Priest.
The segment begins in empty blackness, silent except for the sounds of a straight razor scraping against a man's cheek. Priest intentionally slices a bloody mark on his face as he explains the ritual to his young son, standing nearby. "The blood stays on the blade," he tells his son.
Priest and his street warriors, the Dead Rabbits, gather their axes and clubs in the caverns beneath an old brewery building and stream outside to the snow-covered streets. The Butcher and his men are waiting, and it's not long before the snow turns dirty and bloody. The fighting between the Dead Rabbits and the Nativists is up close and personal. The men claw and hack at each other nose-to-nose, and Scorsese films it with gusto. It's a bold movie moment equal to the best scenes in past Scorsese films like Casino, Raging Bull and Taxi Driver. Sounds and images are perfectly synchronized into a whirlwind package that leaves you breathless.
Scorsese's last film, Bringing Out the Dead, about a troubled Manhattan EMT on the night shift, was an unsuccessful try at reaching back to the grit of earlier films like Taxi Driver and Mean Streets. Kundun, about the Dalai Llama's boyhood escape from Tibet, is an internal and transcendent masterpiece, a rare film drama that achieves real spirituality. Gangs of New York is a giant-sized melodrama, a larger-than-life tribute to Scorsese's childhood living on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan's Little Italy and to the city that's been his lifelong home.
No recent film launches its story with Gangs of New York's energy. The inevitable downside is that the remaining first half lulls in comparison. The film is 2 hours and 38 minutes, yet it still feels incomplete. The first half feels disjointed, and you leave with the impression that key scenes were cut from the film and that unnecessary scenes were left unedited. Scorsese picks up the tempo in Gangs of New York's second half, especially during a party at a Chinese restaurant where Cutting loses his senses during a knife-throwing demonstration, although nothing in the movie matches the energy of its opening scene.
Scorsese recreated Five Points on the famous Cinecettà soundstages in Rome and Gangs' epic sense of realism is evident. Yet, what impresses me more than the film's gigantic scale are the subtle touches Scorsese scatters throughout the film. Look closely and you'll see the image of an eagle painted on the inside of the Butcher's glass eye. This strange, painted eye explains more about Gangs' themes of religious rituals and murderous warfare more than any neighborhood set. It's those small touches that make the film memorable.
For many people, an abundance of special effects is what qualifies a movie as an epic. Filled with fantasy superheroes, monsters and similar ilk, The Two Towers boldly fits the mold. In fact, I'd argue that the current trend in fantasy moviemaking is a result of the first Lord of the Rings movie and its phenomenal box-office success. Still, The Lord of the Rings is the most ambitious film trilogy in recent memory, and The Two Towers is proof of what a director can accomplish when he has complete creative control and the necessary time to make a film the right way. Jackson's second Rings installment boasts its share of wondrous sights. What it's lacking is focused adventure.
Like an old-fashioned matinee serial, The Two Towers picks up where its previous installment finished. The wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellan) is missing after battling a large demon. The rest of the Fellowship -- its hobbit leader Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), his hobbit friends Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin), Meriadoc Brandybuck (Dominic Monaghan) and Peregin Took (Billy Boyd), the brave ranger Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), the Elvish archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and the Dwarf warrior Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) -- continue on their mission to destroy the Ruling Ring of power. The friends are split up and that's partly why The Two Towers is disappointing. Frodo and his comrades share a believable sense of camaraderie. Unfortunately, the plot of the movie takes away much of that spirit by forcing Frodo and his friends into separate camps. The Two Towers adds some new characters to the ensemble, including Bernard Hill as a king who takes up the Fellowship's fight, Mirando Otto as his brave niece and the voice of Andy Serkis as the oily creature Gollum. Still, none of them can compensate for the charismatic McKellen, whose character Gandalf is missing for most of the film.
In The Two Towers, Jackson continues to create Tolkien's fantasyland Middle Earth as a unique world. Jackson wisely balances the spectacular scenery with the film's digital magic, and The Two Towers is a better film because of it. There are long takes of snow-covered mountains and wide-open plains. It's nature photography at its most magnificent.
Jackson directed cult horror movies like Brain Dead and Meet the Feebles, and his talent for creating squishy monsters is evident in The Two Towers. His 1994 art-house hit, Heavenly Creatures, revealed his knack for dramatic performances but The Two Towers offers too few opportunities for human drama. The Two Towers gives audiences plenty of spectacle, but I doubt anyone will remember much of what they've seen when the movie's finished.
At the end of such high profile epics like Gangs of New York and The Two Towers, the discussions ultimately return to the directors. These gargantuan movies are circuses. So it's only fair that the credit and the criticisms are directed at the ringmasters in charge. Scorsese has been called "America's Great Filmmaker of the Streets," and Gangs of New York confirms his status. Gangs shows he still has the spirit and passion necessary to make relevant movies, and there is nothing more exciting than that.
Jackson has made his reputation on his three Lord of the Rings films, an undertaking that boasts a $300 million budget and an 18-month production schedule. It's to Jackson's credit that most people pay little attention to the production details or behind-the-camera gossip and focus on the storytelling.
Director Sam Mendes' father/son gangster tale, Road to Perdition, is the better period melodrama when it comes to generating tears, but Gangs of New York trumps that film in terms of sheer grit and determination to tell its story. Scorsese's melodrama also has the better lead performance with Day-Lewis. As far as movie fantasies go, The Two Towers offers more storytelling than Spiderman, Harry Potter and Star Wars combined. So I suppose it's the best of the fantasy lot this year. Yet, like those other fantasy blockbusters, The Two Towers has completely faded from my mind. On the other hand, I continue to debate the strengths and weaknesses of Gangs of New York. That's what I expect from a good movie epic: A story and performances that will stay with me long after the show.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers CityBeat grade: C.
Gangs of New York CityBeat grade: B.
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